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Photo by Associated Press
Real Madrid (in green) and Manchester United met on the pitch in March of last year in the Champions League tournament, which brings together Europe's best club teams.

The alumnus who has donated more money than anyone else to the University of Michigan is now staging a world-class soccer match at the school as part of his plan to capitalize on the sport's growing American popularity.

Billionaire real estate investor Stephen Ross, a 1962 UM grad who has donated $313 million to the university, two years ago launched an investment and marketing firm, New York City-based RSE Ventures.

Last year, a subsidiary, Relevant Sports, organized the International Champions Cup. On Friday, it was announced that soccer powerhouses Manchester United and Real Madrid will play at Michigan Stadium on Aug. 2 as part of the eight-team, 12-city round-robin exhibition tournament that will culminate in a title game Aug. 4 at Sun Life Stadium in Miami.

Ross owns Sun Life Stadium and its main tenant, the Miami Dolphins of the National Football League. He thinks the U.S. is ripe for more soccer. Ross and Matt Higgins, formerly executive vice president of business operations for the New York Jets of the NFL, co-founded RSE Ventures in 2012 to focus on sports, entertainment and technology.

They see soccer as a moneymaker in the U.S., where the Fox network has begun broadcasting the English Premier League and Major League Soccer continues to see attendance, ratings and market expansion.

"It was really Steve's idea," Higgins said.

Ross said last fall that he wants a new MLS team for South Florida. The league folded the poorly attended Miami Fusion, which played in Fort Lauderdale, in 2001 after four seasons. The belief is that the timing is better now for Miami.

Sun Life Stadium sits mostly empty since the Florida Marlins of Major League Baseball moved to their own venue in 2012. The stadium has hosted several soccer matches that have attracted huge crowds, including Brazil beating Honduras 5-0 in front of 71,124 people in November.

How money is made

Relevant Sports contracts with the association teams — that's what professional soccer teams are called, as opposed to national teams — to play in the International Champions Cup, Higgins said. He declined to disclose how much the teams are paid.

Relevant Sports makes money by selling the domestic and international television broadcasting rights along with corporate sponsorships and tickets.

Irish beer giant Guinness is the title sponsor and Chevrolet the official car of the tournament.

General Motors Co. has a seven-year, $559 million jersey sponsorship deal with Manchester United that begins this year. The tournament will be the first matches for the team in the Chevy jerseys.

It was GM that approached UM last year about hosting a match at the Big House, Brandon said.

Higgins called GM's involvement in the tournament instrumental to making it happen.

"They've been a big driver of it," he said. "Manchester United is a big partnership, so this is a great showcase."

Higgins said the July-August time frame was the only window available to have European teams play in the U.S. before their regular seasons begin.

To get genuine competition-quality play, the decision was made to create an internationally broadcast tournament that also could act as a training warm-up to the teams' league seasons.

"What we're bringing is compelling. We can make these matches actually stand for something," Higgins said. "If the matches are more meaningful, players play harder. The business side gets to put their brand in front of U.S. consumers in a meaningful way."

The tournament will include 38 of the top 100 players in the world. "Steve believes in doing everything best in class," Higgins said.

The tournament comes on the heels of the World Cup, which ends July 13 in Brazil.

Teams, attendance

Other teams in the tournament include Liverpool and Manchester City of Great Britain's Premier League; AC Milan, AC Roma and Inter Milan from Serie A in Italy; and Olympiacos from Superleague Greece.

In last year's International Champions Cup title game, Real Madrid beat Chelsea 3-1 on Aug. 7 in front of 67,273 at Sun Life Stadium.

The only U.S.-based team last year, the Los Angeles Galaxy of Major League Soccer, finished fourth.

Last year's matches averaged 41,048 fans.

The worst attendance in the U.S. was 22,208 for Everton's 6-5 shootout victory over Juventus at San Francisco's AT&T Park on July 31.

Overseas, Milan's 2-1 victory over Valencia on July 27 drew 17,000 at Mestalla Stadium in Spain. That was the lone non-U.S. match in last year's tournament. This year, matches will be played entirely in the United States.

The tournament replaces a similar series of preseason exhibition games played in the U.S. from 2009 to 2011: the World Football Challenge.

For the Ann Arbor game, VIP presale tickets kick off April 7. The general public can buy tickets, which start at $45, beginning at 8:30 a.m. Thursday via MGoBlue. com/tickets. More comprehensive ticket packages will be sold through InternationalChampionsCup.com.

Ross: A Michigan (money) man

Having a match played in Ann Arbor is an added bonus for Ross. "Stephen Ross is quite passionate about Michigan," Higgins said, noting that Ross' cellphone ringtone is "The Victors."

The athletic department and business school are splitting $200 million that Ross pledged to the university in September. His name also is on the 6,000-student Stephen M. Ross School of Business.

Ross earned an accounting degree from Michigan in 1962 after transferring from the University of Florida, followed by a law degree from Wayne State University in 1965 and a master's of law degree the next year from New York University.

He is chairman and majority owner of The Related Cos. LP, the real estate development firm he founded in New York in 1972.

Forbes estimates Ross' worth at $4.4 billion.

He's a Detroit native who grew up in Miami Beach and lives today in New York. His uncle was the late Max Fisher, the noted Detroit philanthropist and industrialist.

Ross began his career as a tax attorney with the Detroit office of Coopers & Lybrand, which later became PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Red-tape delays

The Big House game was briefly advertised on the tournament's website in February, garnering some local media attention, but the information was quickly taken down.

All of the other venues were announced months ago. Brandon said the delay in getting a deal worked out at Michigan was due to the internal approvals required — and working out the many logistical details.